Pass the Popcorn

The administration was sharply divided over the legality of President George W. Bush’s most controversial eavesdropping policies, a congressman quoted former Attorney General John Ashcroft as telling a House panel Thursday.

“It is very apparent to us that there was robust and enormous debate within the administration about the legal basis for the president’s surveillance program,” Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes told reporters after a closed-door meeting with Ashcroft.

Translation: There are folks who are willing to talk and we can start closing in on the members of the administration who have violated the Constitution by engaging in illegal domestic spying.

Vice President [sic] Dick Cheney’s office has refused to comply with an executive order governing the handling of classified information for the past four years and recently tried to abolish the office that sought to enforce those rules, according to documents released by a congressional committee Thursday.

Since 2003, the vice president’s staff has not cooperated with an office at the National Archives and Records Administration charged with making sure the executive branch protects classified information. Cheney aides have not filed reports on their possession of classified data and at one point blocked an inspection of their office. After the Archives office pressed the matter, the documents say, Cheney’s staff this year proposed eliminating it.

Wow, Dick Cheney refusing to comply with the law and then going after a group that tries to do its job by forcing him to comply… What a shocker.